Magical Realism

In Cartagena de Indias towards the end of morning the sun is so intense, the dense light so clear, the diaphanous glow so bright, the total radiance so excessive that in the bedazzlement, I was able to see, I swear, the shadow of two ghosts.

Osip Mandelstam

They hid your verses under loose floor tiles as weapons are hidden or grenades or plans or plots and secret conspiracies. You said that in Russia, only in Russia, verses can kill. Your verses, your simple verses to winter. And when there was no other way to hide them somewhere else your wife, your friends, memorized them. If they were taken as prisoners to Stalin’s cells and made to recite them under torture with this brilliant idea just by uttering them they would be forgotten and then scattered on the wind.

Moscow

HÉCTOR ABAD FACIOLINCE (b.1958) is a Colombian novelist, essayist, journalist, and editor, counted among the most prominent figures of the post-Latin American Boom writers in Latin American literature. He is best known for his novel Angosta, and more recently, the memoirEl Olvido que Seremos. After being expelled from university for writing a defamatory text against the Pope, he moved to Italy before returning to his homeland in 1987. Since 2008, Abad has been a member of the editorial board of El Espectador, Colombia's oldest newspaper. The poems appearing in this issue are taken from his collection Testamento involuntario, published in 2011 by Alfaguara, 2011.